Editor’s observe: This put up is a part of Into the Omniversea sequence centered on how artists, builders and enterprises can remodel their workflows utilizing the newest advances in OpenUSD and NVIDIA Omniverse.
In 3D artwork and design, environment friendly workflows are important for rapidly bringing artistic visions to life.
Common Scene Description, aka OpenUSD, is a framework that enhances these workflows by offering a unified, extensible ecosystem for describing, composing, simulating and collaborating inside 3D worlds. OpenUSD is a key expertise in Autodesk’s suite of merchandise and options, throughout media and leisure; structure, engineering and development; and product design and manufacturing.
Unveiled on the AU 2023 convention this week, the newest OpenUSD updates to Autodesk Maya allow artists and technical professionals to create and manipulate OpenUSD property with better management and effectivity, whereas additionally making certain extra environment friendly and correct 3D workflows.
Bridging the Digital and Actual Worlds With Maya and OpenUSD
Many creators are utilizing Maya and OpenUSD to propel their 3D workflows.
Karol Osinski is a 3D artist at S20M, an architectural and design agency that focuses on tackling distinctive, daring and chic initiatives. On the subject of creating architectural visualizations, Osinski says the most important problem is matching the digital world to the actual one.
Utilizing USD and inventive instruments akin to Maya, SideFX Houdini and Epic Video games’ Unreal Engine, Osinski creates high-quality visuals for shoppers whereas accelerating his architectural workflows.
Osinski’s panoramic view from the twentieth ground terrace within the Higher East Facet
“OpenUSD offers the potential of bridging totally different instruments like by no means earlier than,” mentioned Osinski. “I really like how accessible USD is for first-time customers and the way it opens alternatives to make designs very complicated.”
“Sir Wade” Neistadt, an animator and YouTube creator, goals to make animation and 3D training extra accessible by means of his video tutorials and business coaching. Step one of his distinctive animation workflow is to behave out his animations on digital camera. He then interprets them in Maya to start his animation work earlier than utilizing USD to export them to different 3D software program, together with Blender, for ending touches.
3D artists at NVIDIA are additionally experiencing the ability of Maya and OpenUSD. Technical specialist Lee Fraser led the “Ferret-Story Undertaking” to showcase character creation and animation workflows enabled by OpenUSD and generative AI.
To create the demo, Fraser and his crew collaborated throughout 3D purposes like Blender, Autodesk Maya and Reallusion Character Creator by means of OpenUSD Connectors. This allowed them to scale back the info prep and import and export time that’s often required when working with a number of knowledge sources.
“My favourite factor about utilizing OpenUSD will not be having to consider the place the 3D recordsdata I exploit originated from,” Fraser mentioned. “It was additionally straightforward to make use of USD layers to experiment with making use of totally different animation clips with totally different characters.”
Members of the artistic group joined a latest livestream to share their workflows utilizing Autodesk instruments, OpenUSD and NVIDIA Omniverse, a improvement platform for connecting and constructing OpenUSD-based instruments and purposes.
Whether or not adjusting lighting circumstances in an surroundings or constructing designs from the road view, designers in structure, engineering, development and operations are advancing their work with AI. Study extra by watching the replay:
Shaping the Way forward for 3D With Extra Environment friendly Workflows
AU 2023 attendees skilled how Autodesk is enhancing Maya with its new OpenUSD plug-in to supply extra sensible workflows for varied manufacturing processes. The software program’s newest options embrace:
- Simplified asset sharing: Designers can now use relative paths when creating OpenUSD phases, permitting for simple asset sharing between totally different techniques. This contains help for sublayers, references, payloads and textures.
- Enhanced management: Plug-in builders and technical administrators can overwrite the default prim writers in Maya USD to achieve full management over their OpenUSD exports.
Plus, Autodesk launched spectacular capabilities to LookdevX in Maya, a look-development device that lets customers create OpenUSD shade graphs and customized supplies in Maya. These new options embrace:
- Streamlined shader creation: Customers can make use of a unified shader workflow, changing the necessity for a number of shaders. They will choose their desired shader kind inside the parameters panel, with intuitive error messages guiding them to the right choice.
- Environment friendly operations: Creators can copy, paste and duplicate shaders and supplies utilizing the Outliner and LookdevX device units, with the choice to incorporate or exclude connections.
- Seamless coloration administration: LookdevX in Maya integrates with coloration managers in different digital content material creation apps to make sure correct coloration illustration. Colour administration knowledge is exactly embedded in USD recordsdata for correct studying.
- Superior graphing: Customers can discover superior graphing choices with the built-in element workflow, supporting multichannel Prolonged Dynamic Vary (EXR) workflows inside USD, MaterialX or Arnold shading graphs.
- Environment friendly troubleshooting: Solo nodes allow sooner look-development workflows and environment friendly graph troubleshooting. Customers can examine renders of upstream nodes, supporting each Autodesk Arnold and MaterialX graphs, together with supplies, shaders and compounds.
Get Plugged Into the World of OpenUSD
Anybody can construct their very own Omniverse extension or Connector to boost their 3D workflows and instruments. Discover the Omniverse ecosystem’s rising catalog of connections, extensions, basis purposes and third-party instruments.
Autodesk and NVIDIA are founding members of the Alliance for OpenUSD (AOUSD), collectively strengthening an open future with USD. To study extra, discover the AOUSD discussion board and take a look at assets on OpenUSD.
Share your Autodesk Maya and Omniverse work by means of November as a part of the #SeasonalArtChallenge. Use the hashtag to submit an autumn harvest-themed scene for an opportunity to be featured on the @NVIDIAStudio and @NVIDIAOmniverse social channels.
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